Lightning Forms is a SharePoint list form design tool that aims to enable users to improve the logic, layout and styling of responsive SharePoint Forms. Lightning Forms offers cascading lookups, customized buttons with actions, repeating lists integration, tab controls, styling and conditional control formatting, calculations, and expressions. These features help users to build business forms within SharePoint and offers an alternative to InfoPath Forms.
$2,000
per year per installation
Usabilla (discontinued)
Score 5.4 out of 10
N/A
Usabilla was a web and app survey tool, developed by the Amsterdam company of the same name, and acquired by SurveyMonkey in March of 2019. The product is no longer available.
$49
per month
Pricing
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
Usabilla (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Lightning Forms OnPrem
From $2000
per year per installation
Lightning Forms Plus OnPrem
From $3500
per year per installation
Lightning Forms OnPrem Enterprise Edition
POA
per year per installation
Lightning Forms (Online)
From $2000
per year per installation
Lightning Forms Plus (Online)
From $3500
per year per installation
Lightning Forms Enterprise Edition (Online)
POA
per year per installation
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
Usabilla (discontinued)
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Prices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products.
Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD.
All packages include free technical support.
Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released. (online versions)
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
Usabilla (discontinued)
Features
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
Usabilla (discontinued)
Survey Format & Appearance
Comparison of Survey Format & Appearance features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
8.2
1 Ratings
3% above category average
Usabilla (discontinued)
8.0
4 Ratings
0% above category average
Custom logo/branding
8.21 Ratings
7.94 Ratings
Survey templates
00 Ratings
10.03 Ratings
Themes
00 Ratings
6.04 Ratings
Survey Content
Comparison of Survey Content features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
8.6
1 Ratings
1% above category average
Usabilla (discontinued)
8.6
4 Ratings
1% above category average
Changes to live survey
9.11 Ratings
7.94 Ratings
Multiple question types
8.21 Ratings
7.94 Ratings
Question design help
00 Ratings
10.03 Ratings
Survey Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Survey Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
9.1
2 Ratings
10% above category average
Usabilla (discontinued)
5.8
4 Ratings
34% below category average
Data export
9.12 Ratings
5.54 Ratings
Standard reports
9.11 Ratings
5.54 Ratings
Response tracking
00 Ratings
7.03 Ratings
Custom reports
00 Ratings
5.52 Ratings
Analytics
00 Ratings
5.54 Ratings
Survey Administration & Security
Comparison of Survey Administration & Security features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
9.1
2 Ratings
4% above category average
Usabilla (discontinued)
7.4
4 Ratings
16% below category average
Access controls
9.12 Ratings
7.44 Ratings
Compliance
9.11 Ratings
7.44 Ratings
Survey Logic
Comparison of Survey Logic features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Forms
-
Ratings
Usabilla (discontinued)
6.9
4 Ratings
17% below category average
Survey logic flexibility
00 Ratings
6.94 Ratings
Survey Distribution
Comparison of Survey Distribution features of Product A and Product B
Overall, there are many use cases for which Lightning Forms provides a slick, easy to develop and extremely useful solution. Request forms that need to be actioned and inspection forms are the scenarios that we have used them for so far, which have seen a lot of success. We have decided that other scenarios that are perhaps more sensitive, for instance forms that may contain special category data relating to our customers, are less appropriate given the permissions/licensing constraints of both SharePoint and Lightning Forms.
If we could select 0/10 we would... We would not recommend anyone using this product as it excludes a very important user group, disabled users. If you use this product you will be failing ADA and WCAG 2.1 (EU Directive for public sector websites and mobile apps). In my opinion, you will be vulnerable to lawsuits.
Simple user interface - users of the forms intuitively aware of how/where to input information. This is in part due to being able to show or hide different questions or areas of the form, and making them required or not, based on previous answers.
Low/simple code - building complex forms with automation and multiple dependencies or lookups is relatively easy once you get started. You have the power of JavaScript to use and do some quite clever things if you can get to grips with it - a lot of solutions are only a Google away.
As it is based on SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with the rest of the M365 suite. Things like PowerAutomate enhance its functionality even further.
The styling of the form can sometimes be slightly awkward to use depending on what you're looking to do. For instance, if I was looking to highlight fields that users have missed (left empty), I would need to set up a validation for that question and then set a style for that particular field for when it is invalid. When you have a large and complex form with lots of dependencies, this is awkward.
Support for complex and niche issues is slightly lacking in my experience. I submitted a helpdesk ticket for help with a strange issue I couldn't figure out, which took several weeks to get a response to. Because it is niche, it's more difficult to find an answer by searching the internet. Luckily, knowing there is likely to always be a fix if you find the right place/use the right formula, I manage to resolve the issue with some trial and error.
It is disappointing that Lightning Forms does not integrate with the MS Lists app. Having the ability to access the form through the list app would add in a lot of useful functionality, including a better experience for users when taking photos to add as attachments.
Styling and positioning of the 'Feedback' button could be improved with more options provided. Right now it seems very basic.
Triggered surveys and popups would also benefit for more styling and control over how the survey is presented to users. Sometimes it can be hard to match your brand to the out-of-box options available. I've seen more flexible versions of this in other providers.
Notifications of negative feedback (delivered via email) could be improved. We like to try and take immediate action and the notifications haven't always made this possible. I'd also like to see more notification options added to triggered campaigns and surveys.
It is very user friendly both to me who is building the content (with little background knowledge of coding etc., other than what I have picked up from using products like PowerAutomate, PowerBI, a bit of html etc.) and to end users of varying levels of IT proficiency. This has been extremely important as we have used the forms to make relatively large process changes, and need to have our users on board and seeing that it is actually easier than it was before.
The interface to configure the questionary is quite easy to use. It helps to give autonomy to marketing teams. Once the initial setup is made (integrating a basic javascript code on your website), you can easily deploy any questionary on any page of your website. Usabilla is a very flexible tool overall.
Some support has been okay, but in one instance of a fairly complex problem, the support team were not able to provide me with a fix within a few weeks, before I was able to find a workaround myself.
If we could select 0/10 we would... If Usabilla were to fix their accessibility issues we would consider keeping our subscription to them, but as it stands this does not seem possible as Usabilla does not seem interested in making the platform accessible.
We were using Microsoft Forms, SharePoint Lists and PowerAutomate to attempt to do much of what we are currently doing. Functionality is very limited in comparison. The ability to make questions required based on previous answers was a massive improvement from normal SharePoint List forms and has greatly improved the quality of data. Also just the very visual display and customisation is much better.
I have Hotjar, Sprig, and Usabilla in my workplace. Usabilla unfortunately has the most limited feature set of the 3 options. The difficulty of administering a Usabilla survey on mobile is a big blocker for my projects. Sprig and Hotjar both allow mobile and allow video recordings (either of a user's screen or a user's webcam for impromptu interviews).
We changed the process by which site colleagues report repairs on behalf of customers. Instead of emailing them into a shared inbox, they now report them using a lightning form. We have seen a great improvement in the time taken for our team to log the repair issue from the time is arrives with them.
We anticipate that streamlining our void property reletting process by using a SharePoint kanban board view with lightning forms (providing a single platform for all things void) will reduce avoidable days vacant and therefore reduce our void loss.